


A Coin in Hand

by skullshy



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Anxiety, F/M, I could probably write a dissertation on poverty and mental illness, Mental Illness, Poverty crushes Vex, also haven't watched all the episodes sorry, but percy helps a lot, first time writing in this fandom, gentle loving Percy, got me sucked into Crit Role, if you've ever heard the hair dryer story, maladaptive coping behaviors, self-destructive behaviors, so be gentle, this is the hair dryer story in fantasy land, yeah i'm sorry this'll be angst with a side crouton of hope, you can all blame my SO for this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-11
Updated: 2017-09-11
Packaged: 2018-12-26 15:23:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12061743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skullshy/pseuds/skullshy
Summary: Poverty left Vax’ildan with a thrist for revenge and wayward, theiving fingers. It left Vex’ahlia with a demon she could not control.





	A Coin in Hand

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: Frank depictions of mental illness, obsessive behaviors, panic attacks, hoarding, bingeing and self-punishing behavior

It started before their mother died.

Vex found a coin dropped in a gutter in the filth-caked streets of Byroden. She brought it home to their mother that night, who kissed Vex on the forehead and thanked her. Vex was so happy to have their exhausted mother’s attention, even for a brief moment, that she made it her mission to find as many coins as she could.

She still played with Vax; they tumbled through the winding alleyways and back corners, climbed roofs and smoke stacks. The other children wouldn’t play with Vax and Vex, tossing rocks at them and jeering rude songs about their pointed ears. The twins made up their own games and kept their own company, and found solace in each other instead.

But every day she and Vax ran around taverns and brothels, looking for coins that drunken and careless people had dropped. It hadn’t yet occurred to Vax to steal coins— they were hungry sometimes, when Mama didn’t make enough that week, but they were not desperate.

Vex brought home all the coins she found. She loved the clinking sound they made. She loved the way their mother lit up when the coins were placed in her callused hand.

Her fascination with coins wasn’t an issue.

Then their father demanded they move in with him.

Then he kicked them out.

Then a dragon descended on Byrodon and killed their mother and every living thing for miles.

It became an issue.

 

—

It started with their hunting meats.

Vex would save a little bit for the next day, because who knew what the next day would bring? The meat didn’t usually spoil in a day, and she was half-elven, so her stomach could handle meat that was a little off.

She saved bits of their tack bread, which always found its way into her pockets.

Vex wouldn’t let her brother bargain for their goods anymore, because she knew she could get a better price than he could. And she could— because each time she handed over one of their meager coins, it felt like someone was punching her in the stomach. She paced the night before every shopping trip, going over in her head how much things cost, how much they could afford to spend.

When she got swindled or was forced to buy something at a higher rate, she punished herself. She didn’t eat bread that night, she set up even stricter budgets, and cursed herself in her thoughts.

 _How could you be so stupid, so weak?_  she would ask herself. _You can’t even stick to one measly plan_. _You and Vax will starve to death all because you have no spine to stand up to those greedy merchants_.

Her pockets started growing mold, because she wouldn’t throw away any food scrap, no matter how small, and she knew she would eat it later anyway, so what did it matter?

Vex got their budget down from twenty copper coins to eleven. Then to ten.

At night she would pretend to go to sleep with Vax, and get up in the middle of the night to count their coins.

 

One.

Two.

Three.

Four.

 _Five_.

 

If she lost focus, she berated herself and started again, counting each coin before placing them back in their pouch.

She realized she could cut corners in other ways. She’d buy bread for Vax, but then dig hers out of the baker’s bin when they were in town. Vex would buy any dagger or knife he needed, but she would painstakingly glue feathers onto shafts of wood so that she wouldn’t have to fork over the money to buy arrows in town.

Saving money became an all-consuming task, one that was on her mind from dusk to dawn.

Vax started asking her if she was alright, if she was sleeping well. There were dark circles under her eyes from constantly getting up in the middle of the night, and she lost and gained weight rapidly as she gorged and then hoarded her food in a vicious cycle.

Vex tried to be more furtive, more secretive about her habits. She could stop, she knew she could— but then she would find week-old bread in her pockets, and coins dropped in taverns or fountains found their way into her pouch, and she would resolve not to do it again.

She did it anyway.

Trinket joined the twins, and Vex had him lick her pockets clean whenever Vax wasn’t looking.

Vex loved Trinket— he didn’t judge when she got up in the middle of the night to make sure that all her coins were still in their pouch. Vex could thread her fingers in his thick fur and pretend that everything was fine.

Vax began stealing, and it eased her anxiety whenever he brought home a pouch of coins from his ventures. Soon enough, Vax couldn’t step into a city within a hundred mile radius without the cover of darkness, because he was wanted for theft in all of them. He slept during the day, so that he could run jobs at night, and Vex slept during the night, so that she could take their huntings and trade them for supplies during the day.

Vax couldn’t keep a close eye on her anymore, because they were both running themselves ragged trying to make ends meet.

Then they met Percy, and became part of Vox Machina.

Instead of becoming more difficult to hide her obsessions, it became easier. With so many other people around, it was much easier to trick Vax into thinking that she was fine.

And she was fine.

She just had a… thing.

Vex couldn’t buy anything any more. Her hand would reach into her money pouch— and then she would have to run out of the shop so that she could be sick in the alleyway.

She couldn’t hand a single coin over.

It didn’t matter that she and Vax could split their expenses amongst the group.

It didn’t matter that they had more coins than they had ever had.

Vax would ask for money to buy something, and Vex would give it to him.

And then she would steal it back from him while he was sleeping, so that he would have to ask Percy or Pike to borrow money, which he hated doing.

Vex’s coat turned from moldy to rank. She knew she had to stop hoarding food and coins, but she couldn’t.

Having coins in a heavy pouch around her neck gave her a brief relief from the incessant haze of anxiety in her head. Finding old food in her pockets made her stomach stop swimming for a few seconds, because she was always sick to her stomach, with the thought of how to save food and money drowning out all other thoughts in her head.

Grog was the only one who would stand next to her, and Keyleth kept trying to unsubtlely give her bars of soap. Pike offered a healing spell, which Vex thought about taking until Scanlan came up with sarcastic ditty about Vex the miser whose coat was a sentient swamp monster. Vex screamed at them all until she was hoarse, and then didn’t talk to anyone for days.

In the meanwhile, her habits got worse.

She took her coins out every other hour to check them, and Vax stopped asking her to buy things for him. Vex wouldn’t even let Trinket lick her pockets clean, in case she had left something in there that she wanted to eat later.

Vex stopped eating with the group. It was just too hard, and they didn’t understand. None of them had grown up hungry like Vex and Vax had, and they couldn’t comprehend the constant fear of running out of food to eat or coins to spend.

Finally, Vax became fed up.

He took her aside one evening and demanded her coat.

“Give me the gods-damned coat, Vex. _Now_.”

Vex was beyond excuses. There was nothing rational about her hoarding now, no sense in her obesseions with the tiny scraps and smallest coins.

“No,” she said.

“Vex’ahlia, I swear to all that good and decent in this world, if you don’t give me that coat right now—”

Vex tried to squirm away from him, tried to fight back.

But her obsessions had taken their toll on her— she couldn’t stop Vax from ripping the coat off her back and throwing it into the bonfire.

Vex screamed and cried, and when he reached for her coins, she punched him in the nose and broke it.

The rest of Vox Machina were terrified and had no idea what to do.

They’d never seen Vex and Vax fight before, not with such desperation and fear.

 

It was Percy who actually intervened.

“STOP!” he roared so loud that the trees shook with his voice. “For the love of Pelor, please stop.”

He wound his way in between the twins.

Pike and Keyleth dragged Vax off to one side of the camp to fix his nose.

Vex went to a fallen log on the other side of the camp and sat down, her head between her knees.

Percy came and sat down next to her.

“Why are you sitting next to me?” Vex choked out. “I’m disgusting, I’m sick—”

“You’re fine,” Percy said.

He tentatively reached out his hand on her back.

She melted into his touch and started crying.

Percy rubbed slow circles across her back.

“You’re not disgusting or sick, you just have a problem,” Percy told her. “And problems are meant to be solved.”

“I c-c-can’t!” Vex sobbed. “I’ve tried so many times, and I can’t stop!”

“That’s why you’re getting a little help, alright?” Percy said. “Do you want some help?”

Vex nodded into Percy’s shoulder.

“Okay, here’s what we’re going to do,” Percy said. “Pike is going to buy everyone waybread to put in their pockets. When you run out, someone else will always have more.”

Vex looked a little dubious, but nodded.

“And we’re going to get you a bag of holding, as soon as we get to a major city,” Percy added.

“That sounds like the opposite of help,” Vex muttered.

Percy just raised an eyebrow.

“And if you fill it with valuable items that you can stash in hoards in all across Tal’Dorei?” Percy asked.

“Oh,” Vex responded.

She rubbed her snotty nose on his tunic.

Percy grimaced.

Why was it that Percy could always lay out her problems, make them easy and forthright, pulled them out of the shadows and into the bright light of day?

Percy handed her a handkerchief, and she wiped her nose.

 

—

Getting better wasn’t instantaneous, and it wasn’t perfect.

Vex still slipped sometimes.

But when she was tempted to put a pastry in her pockets for later, she could remind herself that she had plenty of gold to buy more pastries. If she found that she had stashed extra food, she didn’t beat herself up— she just gave the food to Grog. Grog didn’t ask where the food came from, and he never judged her, and just ate it.

Percy went from shop to shop with her, purchasing jewerly and paintings and other valuable items that she could sell quickly for a profit, if she ever got concerned about her funds. And once they began to hunt the Chroma Conclave in earnest, it helped that they had lodgings all across the continent, where Vex could add to her collection and make sure it was still there.

Scanlan tried to break into one of her hoards, one time. He got a faceful of exploding ink that took three washings to get off his face and hands. After that, he never tried again.

 

Vex would always struggle a little— when she was stressed, or tired, or when Percy almost died, her habits would surge.

But Vax was always there to gently dig out her pockets, or hold her hands so she wouldn’t compulsively count her coins.

And Percy?

Percy would always kiss her cheek, and march himself right through her problems until they fell like dust under his feet.

Her life wasn’t perfect, but it was hers— and it was something that could not be lost as easily as coin or food.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> The Crit Role fanfiction is pretty small, so I thought I'd gift them with my presence. 
> 
> And by presence, I mean SOUL-CRUSHING ANGST. :D
> 
> Anyway, I didn't see any fic that focused on a mental illness angle to Vex's money grubbing ways, so I wrote one myself. 
> 
> If you're new to the Skullshy-bandwagon, I have mostly Marvel fic right now, but I will deluging the Crit Role fandom with unnecessary angst and arranged marriage and feels and brocade skirts very shortly. :D
> 
> So yeah, stick around. :D


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